


Your Friendly Neighborhood Eddie Kaspbrak

by ragtagmatt



Series: Eddie Kaspbrak, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Marvel Cinematic Universe Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, F/M, M/M, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:47:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23398702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ragtagmatt/pseuds/ragtagmatt
Summary: "I got stuck," Eddie deadpanned and Richie burst out in laughter."You what? How, tell me, how did you get stuck?" he heaved, "please, I don't get it.""Well I um, jumped up and when my palms touched the ceiling, they stuck to it. Like cement.""Wait, you're not fucking with me, right? Like, you got stuck. On the ceiling.""Yeah. And then I lifted my foot up. And that stuck too. And then my other one. And then I realised I was crawling on the ceiling so I freaked out and fell down."Richie gaped. His mouth went open, close, open, close, like a fish out of water."Please swear on your beautiful, sexy mom that what you're saying is true.""I'm not swearing on that.""Then swear on my comic book collection.""...I swear.""Holy shit."Eddie Kaspbrak, scrawny, asthmatic kid from Queens gets bitten by a spider during one of his field trips to Oscorp™ with his AP science class.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Series: Eddie Kaspbrak, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683130
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	Your Friendly Neighborhood Eddie Kaspbrak

**Author's Note:**

> This is by all means, completely, utterly self indulgent. I really like Spider-Man and although I had thought that Richie getting bitten was interesting, Eddie exploring the whole superhero shtick really intrigued me. 
> 
> 1st chapter is sort of a prologue! Story will continue during 2019, 2 years later than the first chapter :) Have fun reading!

Eddie remembers the exact time and date he had the biggest panic attack of his life, followed by three more equally bad panic attacks over the course of no more than 4 days.

That stupid fucking spider.

Well, not stupid, exactly. Perfectly genetically engineered to the ability of concentrating all of its unique features and passing them on to an individual of a completely different species, more like.

14:31, May 27th, 2017.

OSCORP HQ, 41st floor, limited clearance.

He knows, because his timer had beeped, and he had sat down and pulled out his med-bag to take his daily dose. Counting and deciding which pills to take first usually takes around 30 seconds and yelling at Richie to stop bothering him (the sucker just can't not wait up for him, even if it means he's missing all the cool sciencey stuff the intern is blabbing on about) takes around another 30.

That's when he felt it. Richie had pulled him up to his feet after their 1 minute sit-down, and as soon as Eddie was stable, a sharp pain bloomed on the back of his neck. As if a small crab had nipped him. Honestly, the shriek he let out was really embarrassing, and it didn't help that Richie decided that his best friend yelling out in shrill pain was one of the funniest things he had ever seen. 

But, as soon as it started, it ended. The pain was over, and Eddie was back to feeling normal. 

"Fuck, fuck, fuck. Richie- Rich, you piece of shit, stop laughing. What if it were an aneurysm? What if my braincells had popped? I would be dead by now and you'd be laughing Rich!" Eddie scolded. 

He was seriously fed up with Richie antics now; first it was flirting with the 40 year old receptionist in the lobby, then debating whether the earth was flat with the tour guide.

"Oh, but your face, Eds," he laughed, "it was priceless! I wish I would've snapped a pic."

Eddie sighed, " No, you don't. What if i were seriously hurt? Did you know that in Austral-" 

"Calm down, it was probably just a knot of nerves and nothing more." Richie explained, matter-of-factly.

Fine, maybe he was right. But Sonia had taught Eddie to fear everything that wasn't her. The amount of hours he has spent on WebMD could honestly rival the hours Richie has on Team Fortress 2 (four hundred fifty seven hours and thirty six minutes as of today).

Nevertheless, Eddie didn't say anything. Sometimes in moments like these he doubted whether or not his mother was really the person he trusted the most, the one who would rruly keep him safe (her words, not his).

As the pair was catching up to the rest of the group, Richie noticed something on the back of Eddie's neck, something that hadn't been there before, when they were sitting in the bus, or walking around the different lab sections with the rest of the class.

Richie spent an awful lot of time staring at the back of Eddie's head when he wasn't looking. It's not weird at all. Most best friends spent a lot of time looking at eachother, right?

Still, as his eyes defocused from the rest of group they were catching up to, they instead landed on Eddie's neck. Particularly the big, red circle around a small, even redder dot.

"Woah, dude, who gave you a hickie just now? Didn't know you had a thing for massive nerds, Eds! If you really wanted to, you could've just gone up to Sta-"

"What the fuck are you talking about, Richwad?" Eddie had turned around, already aggravated. 

Richie thought he was cute when he got angry, like a little engine train that spewed clouds and clouds of steam out of its ears.

"Dude, turn around," Richie said, "I'll take a picture. Is that the thing you had screamed about? Pretty nasty bite-" he took out his phone, "-you got there." He snapped a photo.

"What fucking bug bite? Maybe it's from all those fleas you carry around in that mop of hair you have on your head, probably from all those rats you hang out with when I'm busy- show me the picture, Rich!" 

Richie showed him the photo he took on his Snapchat app. On the back of his neck, there really was a big, red bruise.

Now that he had realised that it really was a real pain he had felt, it washed down on his face like rain dripping down a window.

Maybe it was cancer. You don't really need to smoke or do anything to get it, it could happen to anyone. Or maybe it was a rash. More than half of the human population carry an STD. Eddie hadn't done anything though... (He blushed a little bit, but quickly got back to the matter at hand.)

It looked like a bug bite, though.

Oh God, did he just get malaria? Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

He felt his chest constructing and his airways tightening up. 

He couldn't breathe. Maybe this was one of the symptoms. Maybe, due to his terrible immune system, the disease had already had enough time to set in and destroy his body in a matter of minutes.

He was going to die of malaria at the age of 14.

"Hey, Eds. Fuck, I need you to breathe for me, okay? In and out, okay? Great, dude, you're doing great, don't worry," Richie pulled out a spare inhaler from his backpack pocket and put it up to Eddie's mouth, pressing down and letting the battery acid shit that was in it infiltrate Eddie's throat.

"Don't worry bro, you'll be fine. You're alright. You're safe dude, don't worry, I got you," he reassured Eddie. He had done this a thousand times before. Eddie's 'asthma' attacks weren't that common but they sure as hell were intense. Richie had learned to deal with them by the time he was 11 years old. 

Tears pooled up in Eddie's eyes, his cheeks were red and blotchy, his hands were violently shaking as he grabbed on to the sleeves of Richie's denim jacket, pulling him downwards into an embrace.

Hugs usually helped him calm down. 

But only if he initiated them.

It was a little complicated.

"Heyyy, bud, it's fine." 

"I'm gonna- I'm gonna die Rich, my mom's gonna kill me. She'll see it and she'll send me to the- to- to the-" 

"Shhhh. Don't worry about it. Breathe for me dude, okay? You're okay, you're here with me, not your mom."

Eddie instantly relaxed, although he was still sniffling. He looked up a bit and realised that a small crowd had gathered around. The first person he saw was Beverly, who rushed over to him and gently crouched down next to where he was sitting on the cold, tile of the 41st floor hall. 

Beverly put a hand in his hair, gently petting him, which let him relax a bit as he was regaining his strengths from his freak-out.

"You okay, Eddie?" She whispered in his ear. She knew he didn't like the '5 minutes of fame' his meltdowns got him, despite some kids insisting that he was doing it all for attention. 

Eddie nodded nervously. He was doing fine, he really was. God, it's so stupid. It's probably just a scratch or something- or if it was a bug, then just some fly you could get in the city, or something.

He was trying really really hard to stop thinking about it.

Beverly looked up at Richie as if to ask "Hey, dude, what the fuck happened? Everything was fine and then all of a sudden he gets like this? Is everything okay?" 

Richie shrugged in response.

In that moment an intern and their teacher rushed over to Eddie, completely ignoring his friends, who were still trying to calm him down. 

"Mr. Kaspbrak are you alright?" "What happened?" "I've dialed your mother, she will be here shortly." "Do you need to be escorted downstairs?" All these questions coming from these stupid grown-ups, made Eddie even more irritated, and visibly so.

He didn't want his mother to come get him.

The tour was far from over and there was still so much he wanted to see. He had joined the AP science club for a reason! Seeing OSCORP had been a dream for him since he first learned how to disassemble and reassemble his home computer on his own.

He was fine, anyway. These asthma attacks usually come and go. 

But Eddie was 'fragile and delicate', which meant anytime something mildly dangerous or harmful happened, it was a field trip to the doctor's office. Yay.

Beverly and Richie looked at eachother again. Someone had to bring Eddie downstairs, but Sonia absolutely hated both of their guts.

"I'll g-go downstairs with you- you, Ed- Eddie." Bill had emerged from the crowd. Out of everyone, he was the most tolerable one, after Stanley, on Sonia's 'People to Hate' list.

"Thanks, Bill." Eddie smiled. He was glad that atleast for five minutes before his inevitable demise he'd get to be with one of his best friends.

As he and Bill left (under the supervision of another intern), Eddie stayed quiet and so did Bill. They didn't need to talk about what happened. Eddie didn't need pity, or looks of concern or weird inspirational quotes you'd get from his mom's facebook page.

He was glad someone was there for him, though.

As they got down to floor zero, he looked at Bill. His mom was at reception, yelling at the unlucky woman who had the unfortune of interacting with Sonia Kaspbrak.

"I don't wanna go, Bill. She's going to lock me in the pantry or some shit. All I'll have to eat will be organic rice crackers and wilted celery." Eddie half-smiled.

The best thing he could do right now was add a little bit of light to the dark sense of dread that was infesting his brain, surely, and not even a little bit slowly.

Bill smiled back. He always had this 'too-wise-for-his-age' look that sometimes either creeped Eddie out a little bit or reassured him and told him everything was really going to be fine. 

This one was more of the latter.

"I'll s-see you on th-the othe- other suh-suh-side, Eddie," Bill saluted and grinned.

Eddie saluted back.

They hugged eachother (Eddie made sure he hadn't been spotted by his mom yet) and bid their farewells. As Bill saw Sonia harshly latch her hand on to Eddie's arm, he pressed his lips together and took notice of the big bruise forming on Eddie's neck. It really did not look normal, and he felt a little bit of fear creep up on him as he realised how Sonia would treat Eddie for the next few weeks.

As Eddie woke up next morning, he felt fine. His neck had stopped being sore and his mom was still surely asleep, as it was around 6:30 and her work day usually started at 9. 

As he sat up on his bed, he felt it.

The feeling of last night's dinner coming up from where it had gone. So much for gravity.

Eddie jolted up and ran to the bathroom, emptying out his stomach in to the toilet bowl, as quietly as he could, even though the force of it made it incredibly painful. 

When he was done, he leaned against the wall. He was sweaty and his head was pounding. Shivers ran down from his head to his toes. He really was sick. Bug bite or not, he felt like absolute shit, so he went back to bed. 

As he opened the bathroom door, he realised he couldn't get his hand off of the handle. Had mom waxed it or something? What the fuck? He pulled at the handle once, twice, but his hand was absolutely and most certainly stuck to it like cement. He pulled a third time and as his hand came off with incredible force, that sent him staggering a bit backwards. 

There was a crack in the wood underneath the handle which he had pulled.

He didn't notice it though.

His mom was still sleeping, so he crept to the kitchen for a glass of water. Thank god for tile floors, if he had made anything creak, he never would've forgiven himself.

As he reached for the glass, he realised he didn't have to stand on his tippy toes anymore. He could, although with a bit of stretching, get it normally.

Had he grown during the night? 

Or had mom decided to lower down the cabinets? 

Probably the other one.

She had been complaining about back problems.

He was too tired to ask more questions. He took a swig of water, emptied the glass in the sink and went back to bed. 

When he woke up the second time, the first thing he noticed was how much his muscles ached. It was like a match had been set off in his arms and chest and he had been brutally beaten by a horde of rock people, or something.

He had trouble breathing again. He cried from pain, from exhaustion and discomfort until his body calmed down on its own.

He was so tired. So he went back to sleep.

Around a week passed. Every day went by the same. Wake up, vomit, go to sleep, wake up, cry because of the pain, go back to sleep, wake up, lay in bed, hyperventilate and then stare at the ceiling and ignore the unbearable itch under his skin, vomit, eat lunch, vomit, do the homework that's been sent to his phone by his friends, give up (due to constant discomfort), eat dinner, take meds (his doses were upped three times since this started), go vomit them out (in secret), go to sleep, wake up with a fever, go to sleep, wake up again, go back to sleep again, wake up.

And so the cycle repeats.

But after a few days it stops. Completely. He just wakes up, gets ready for the nausea to set in and it never does. He touches the back of his neck and it doesn't feel sore anymore.

In fact, he honestly feels like a million dollars. He feels healthier and stronger than ever, even his already decent eyesight is better. 

He hears his mother wake up from two rooms over.

Like, he literally hears her yawn, crystal clear. 

Maybe he imagined it.

As he gets up, ready to finally take a shower (Sonia doesn't let him shower when he's sick because it just "heightens the risk of pneumonia"), he notices that his pyjama pants don't fit him anymore. 

Just a few days ago they were long enough to nearly cover his toes.

Now they barely reach his ankles.

Mom hadn't done his laundry in the past few days, too afraid of the laundry detergent giving him a rash to bother.

But hey, puberty is weird.

Richie had also grown very quickly. Just 2 years ago he was barely taller than Bill, who was barely taller than Mike, who was barely taller than Stan, who was barely taller than Bev, who was a little bit taller than Ben, who was taller than Eddie by a margin.

Now Richie is taller than Bill by a nice few inches, and so is Stan and Mike and Beverly, but Ben is still growing, although it looks like he'll surpass Mike pretty soon.

So it's about time he caught up.

His mom kept a height chart by one of the living room doorways, after a freakout 5 years ago when their doctor had told her that Eddie was abnormally small for kids his age.

Sonia left the office in hysterics, started scheduling appointments at a different office, on the other side of Queens altogether, but still bought the chart. 

Last time Eddie had checked it, which was around 1 month ago, he had been 5'4". Now he was 5'7".

Three inches. He had grown three whole inches in the last week or so, because he knows, just knows, that there's no way he had grown much before that. 

What the fuck was happening to him? 

Even after vicious begging, Sonia still made Eddie stay home for the next week, despite him insisting that he was totally, completely, amazingly fine and that he felt very healthy.

She was a tough cookie to crack.

During that week, Eddie had started looking in the mirror more. His muscles looked way more defined than they had before (he had abs? Fucking abs? Since when?), his skin had started to look a lot less sickly, after his body decided to reject the vitamins his mom spoonfed him before breakfast and after dinner.

He had also torn down the bathroom door handle after his hand stuck to it. 

It was like that Captain America dude. Richie collected vintage comic books of him obsessively. Bill collected his trading cards and together, they formed the leadership of The Losers Club's very own superhero dweeb division! 

Once, when they were hanging out in Stanley's backyard, lazing on a hammock, squished up together like sardines, they had read an old Captain America Origins issue from 1944. 

It said he had been injected by a super serum, which made him into an unstoppable superhuman fighting machine. He went from being a scrawny, asthmatic kid from Brooklyn to a buff, muscled tank with heightened senses and reflexes, which made him into a perfect asset to the army. And now he was hanging out with the Avengers, saving the world once again! 

Eddie remembers the absolute joy of reading those comics with Richie. He remembers his dream of being something more than 'Little, fragile, delicate Edward Kaspbrak'. 

Maybe... Maybe he was like that too? What if... 

He quickly brushed it off. 

Now that he was taller, did that mean he was finally able to reach the ceiling when he jumped? 

There's no harm in trying out.

He expected the jump to be way harder to do. With barely any force, he leapt up into the air and touched the ceiling with both of his palms.

And he never landed.

He was stuck to the ceiling. 

His body was dangling on the white plaster over the couch, two hands attached to it like one of those festival bracelets you just can't get off.

He pulled himself up a little bit - his upper body strength had developed immensely - and put his foot to the ceiling. He put his other foot up, and pressed his sole to it firmly. The realisation that he was, in fact, crawling on the living room ceiling hit either too late or too early, because he suddenly panicked and let his body tense for just a millisecond. To his dismay, it's just what it took to lose his grip.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" The loss of concentration made his arm slip and he went tumbling down to the ground with a loud thud. His house was no bouncy castle - the  
impact made the dishes in the old grandma cabinets rattle and the old picture of... (What was it? Dorry? Darry? Whatever, some town in Maine Eddie's father had grown up in) rattle.

Eddie groaned in pain. What the fuck was that? How? Was he chosen by God, or something? No way that this was happening. He had to tell someone. Richie- Of course, he had to tell Richie! He would freak out, the look on his face would be something to die for, surely.

But what if Richie tells everyone? He talks so much, he might let it slip. He wouldn't do it on purpose, of course. The way his rants usually go is cause for concern, though. Richie would say something in passing about his friend having weird strength and stickyness abilities, and then that would get spread around and Eddie would be sent to some weird laboratory and then the Russian mafia would pay a hefty sum to the US government to get ownership of Eddie and they would torture him and send him on deadly missions where he would kill people and eventually be the tool that takes the lives of thousands of innocent people- 

Where was his inhaler? He was panicking, it mean he needed it, right?

But he could breathe.

Everything felt fine, just... worrisome.

A breath escaped from his lips. Had the asthma gone away too? The inhaler smugly glinted at him as a ray of sun hit it on the coffee table next to Eddie.

The week after that, Sonia finally, albeit hesitantly, let the long awaited Losers Club member return to school, new range of meds to pick and choose from packed in his bag. Some kids got candy or juiceboxes to bring to school. Eddie got pills and weird detox shots. He couldn't pick a favorite because they all tasted horribly. 

And they just would come up later anyway.

"Oh, Edwad, ma love! I 'ad been told by the governah tha' you'd fallen on the battlefield! You're aloyve! What a joy this is! Let us elope at once!" an annoying (but one that Eddie was quite fond of) voice called out, this time as Jane Margaret Smithenwoodson, a british noble woman who had been in love with Edward Kasprakindale since the moment her eyes landed on him in the spring of 1875.

"Shut the fuck up, creep," Eddie spit back, although a small grin was starting to form, judging by the upturned mouth corner he tried to keep down with minimal success.

"It's good to have you back, Spaghettio! How was imprisonment? What did you do? Steal a loaf of bread in the medieval times?" Richie shot back, smiling so wide it looked as if his face muscles would give out at any given moment.

"Wouldn't it be more likely that his hands would've been cut off, or something? Punishments were far more brutal in those times than they are now, you know" 

"Hmm, you may be right, Ringwald! Where did you attain this information, If I may ask?" 

"Well, Richie, if you hadn't been daydreaming about Eddie's arrival so much, you would've noticed that Ben has been tutoring me in world history," Beverly smirked and both Richie and Ben blushed, although for different reasons.

"Alright then, champ! Show us those beautiful, bloody stumps then!" Richie exclaimed, turning back to where Eddie was still standing.

Eddie pulled his arms from their crossed position and did a lazy attempt at jazz hands. Richie said something along the lines of 'Oh, my heavens! They've grown back! Witchcraft! Witchcraft, I say!' before quieting down and looking Eddie up and down. He felt a bit awkward now. 

Richie furrowed his eyebrows and squinted. He stood up, looked Eddie up and down again, clutched his hands on his shoulders and gasped, wide eyes magnified under his coke bottle glasses like saucers.

"No way. What the fuck! Do you guys see this?" 

"See what?" Stanley looked up from his book, "It's just Eddie." 

"It's not just Eddie! He grew! Eddie is taller now! What are you now, three feet instead of two?"

"Beep, beep, asshole! And no, I uh... I didn't grow," Eddie muttered. He really didn't want Richie to freak out. Summer was starting soon and he just wanted to end his last year in middle school without any problems. 

His best friend smiled wide, like a cheshire cat on drugs. "Oh, but you did, Eds," he whispered. Excitement. That's what Eddie sensed in his voice. Pure, unbridled excitement, the kind where you could tell that someone knew something was up. He shuddered. Should he tell Richie? What should he do? Ignore it? He didn't want Richie to stop being his friend. It could go two ways and he wasn't a fan of any of them.

"Fuck it," he said, "and don't call me Eds," he took Richie aside to go to the bathroom, where no one else could hear them, or atleast no one else would care about what they were talking about.

"Woah, slow down, partner! Buy me some dinner first, won't you?" Richie giggled, trying to keep his calm with Eddie's much stronger grip on his hand. As they got into an out of order stall, Eddie took his hand out of Richie's, making him ache for just a second more of that sacred intimacy he scretly craved more than anything.

"Ok dude, here's the gist of it. I went home after the tour, got super sick, like, I was vomiting nearly all the time and had a fever, right?"

"Yeah, Mrs. K. told me after- Ow! What the fuck was that? How are you strong, what?" 

"Now is not the time, shitstick! I'm freaking out over here!" 

"Okay, fine, continue." 

"So, as I was saying, I was really sick, right? So, I stayed in bed all day and everything was hurting and I felt like shit all the time and then one day I woke up and I felt the greatest I had ever felt, atleast in a while. So, I told my mom and she said that I wasn't better yet, just delusional, so I stayed home."

"Uh huh. And?"

"I'm getting there. I realised that I grew three inches, I don't know how, and I wanted to check if I could touch the ceiling when I jumped."

"Well, could you?"

"I got stuck," Eddie deadpanned and Richie burst out in laughter. 

"You what? How, tell me, how did you get stuck?" he heaved, "please, I don't get it."

"Well I um, jumped up and when my palms touched the ceiling, they stuck to it. Like cement."

"Wait, you're not fucking with me, right? Like, you got stuck. On the ceiling."

"Yeah. And then I lifted my foot up. And that stuck too. And then my other one. And then I realised I was crawling on the ceiling so I freaked out and fell down." 

Richie gaped. His mouth went open, close, open, close, like a fish out of water. 

"Please swear on your beautiful, sexy mom that what you're saying is true."

"I'm not swearing on that."

"Then swear on my comic book collection." 

"...I swear."

"Holy shit."

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter: Eddie, 16, navigates being a superhero, Richie, living with his overbearing mother and some other wacky teenage stuff :)


End file.
